The British public voted for their favourite pies and fucked it up big time

May I start by saying, polls are a lot of fun until they are no fun at all.

Everyone loves a good list, a good ranking, a league table with winners, losers, dreams smashed, underdogs victorious, but honestly, after the British public were asked to vote for their favourite pies and they came out with the below, let’s just fuck democracy all the way off, off into the deepest, hottest volcano on whatever unfortunate, remote island still falls under the Queen’s decrepit colonial dominion.

The top 10 pies:

Cottage pie - 74,000 votes

Fish pie - 60,500

Shepherd’s pie - 14,800

Chicken & leek pie - 14,800

Chicken & mushroom pie - 12,100

Steak & ale pie - 9,900

Meat & potato pie - 5,400

Pork pie - 5,400

Steak & kidney pie - 4,400

Corned beef pie - 4,400

Here is the definition of a pie: “a pie is a baked dish of fruit, or meat and vegetables, typically with a top and base of pastry.”

I always thought the last speck of decency on this grey island was its subjects’ ability to understand the concept of a pie. I was wrong. And yet 74,000 people voted for cottage pie as the best pie despite the fact it is NOT A PIE. Fish pie got 60,500 despite the fact it is NOT A PIE. Nearly 15,000 people voted for shepherd’s pie despite the fact that is NOT A PIE (it is nice, though.)

Just because something is cooked in a roasting dish does not make it a pie. A lasagna is not a pie. Or is it? It has a top, I guess… but no, still not a pie. If I reheated a bunch of leftover spag-bol and then dumped mash potato on top of it, is that now a pie? Is that spaghetti bolognese pie? No. It’s not. (Although that does also sound nice.)

Still, the rest of the list isn’t so bad.

Chicken & leek pie: 14,800 – great; the true winner

Chicken & mushroom pie: 12,100 – yes, good pie

Steak & ale pie: 9,900 – good

Meat & potato pie: 5,400 – my dad voted five thousand times

Pork pie: 5,400 – very good

Steak & kidney pie: 4,400 – pretty good

Corned beef pie: 4,400 – dad, stop

But the damage has already been done. I don’t sit up late staring into the windows of my local Pieminster or pop into Greggs to loudly berate the preferences of people who just want a Steak Bake before work, and I’m not going to storm the cenotaph in a pork pie hat with a placard that says “NOT IN PIE NAME” and all that, but the crap food opinions of this country need to stop.